Engine Part Found Accidentally While Hiking In Northern CA

When Dan Brewster stumbled onto the site where his uncle's military plane crashed on California's Mt. Lassen 55 years ago, it was a dream come true for his family.

The Reno man's 10-year search for the spot where Vernon Moe and seven others died ended when the toe of his shoe struck the edge of a buried airplane engine on the steep mountainside in 1998, reports the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Brewster never met his late uncle, but has his middle name and says the memory of the bold World War II Air Force pilot loomed large in family lore.

Moe was co-pilot on a C-47 that went down on a flight from Spokane, WA, to Travis Field Air Force Base outside San Francisco during a heavy snowstorm in the winter of 1951-52. The winter of 1951-52 was notorious for bad weather.

Moe's sister, Zona, was pregnant with Brewster at the time of the crash -- December 1951. Moe's wife also was pregnant when her husband died. Jacqueline Moe, born two weeks after her cousin, would never met her father.

The crash, and subsequent difficulties put both of the mothers under stress at the time, remembers Brewster.

"I remember my mom going nuts," Brewster said. "It's a funny kind of remembering because it's at a cellular form of remembering."

After the crash Donner Pass got 65 feet of snow, and, a month after the plane crashed, the train City of San Francisco got stuck on the pass, calling for a daring rescue of the passengers.

The fatal crash site wasn't found until the snow melted six months later by a hiker on Mount Lassen. The Boy Scouts and National Guard initially cleaned up the crash debris then buried what was too heavy to carry out.

Brewster started looking for the site and made a series of hikes to locate the site starting in 1988. In an effort to get records of the crash Brewster wrote to Rep. Barbara Vucanovich, R-Nev., asking for a copy of the Air Force's investigation. But much of the information, including possible causes, was redacted (blacked) out.

Brewster, however, found that Moe had complained about the condition of the aircraft before the flight. Using Air Force photos of the crash he triangulated the location, then he stumbled upon the buried engine in 1998.

Brewster took photos of what remained, compiled reports for his family members and said his goodbyes to his uncle. "It was a kind of closure for me," Brewster said. "(My family was) pleased to know when and where and the circumstances involved."

Even though he never met his uncle, Brewster said he was compelled to search for the site because of Moe's impact on the family.

Seeing Moe's resemblance in Brewster his mother gave him the middle name Vernon, after her beloved brother.

Brewster told the Reno Gazette-Journal he'd like to take his cousin Jacqueline up to the site where her father died.

"I think my cousin can make it," Brewster said. "It's a nice hike. It's a hard hike -- right along the side of Mount Lassen in a place called Crescent Crater."

FMI: www.nps.gov/lavo/, www.afrc.af.mil/